Thursday, February 17, 2005

The Nancy Experiment

I had a rough sketch of Nancy Drew, and decided to finish it off by experimenting with the same technique I tried with the rooster illustration . I've decided I like the method, but I'm not too happy with the way Nancy herself turned out. There's something that bugs me about her face especially. Anyway, I thought it'd be interesting to show the different steps...

click on thumbnails for larger image




This is the first sketch - done quickly with good ol' pencil and paper. Poor Nancy looks a bit crazed.




I scanned the sketch, and started making adjustments in photoshop. I have a tendancy to draw eyes too big, so first thing was to shrink the eyes. Once I was reasonably happy with the revisions, I printed this out.




Using a lightbox, I redrew Miss Nancy, and spent a while doing lots o' shading. I used a blue colorerase pencil, mostly because I had one sitting around (scanned grayscale...). Her face lost the original expression, but I didn't feel like trying to fix it.




After scanning the finished drawing into photoshop (and moving her left arm a bit), I made the lines into a channel, filled it, and made it the top layer. I made lots of layers underneath - one for hair, one for skin, one for her shirt, etc. and then did a little bit of shading under the lines.




The finish... After some basic shading under the lines, I colored the lines a few shades darker than what was underneath. Then on a layer above the line drawing, I did lots of touch-ups and highlights all over the place. I experimented a little with custom brushes, but I mostly used the Spatter brushes in the default palette. To finish it off, I put a texture of a piece of scanned velvety paper over the top of the whole thing.



So there 'tis. Time for some sleuthin'!
-maryn

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Keane Eyes





Had an exciting morning "junking" about some of the more uh... interesting... parts of Salt Lake City. We found lots of eBay potential - but I found the treasure of the day: stacks and stacks of (Walter) Margaret Keane prints. There's just something creepy yet compelling (in a black velvet painting sort of way) about them, that I just had to have one. For a hefty 4 bucks, I'm now the proud owner of a print of Big-Eyed Carolers. Some look as if yowling in pain, the others just sad, despondent with the knowledge that Santa has forgotten them yet another year.

So if you've never had the pleasure of experiencing the phenomenon of "Waifs," "Keanes," or "Sad Eyes," - here ya go. Enjoy!
Keane Eyes Gallery


Friday, February 11, 2005

Year of the Rooster

thanks to otis for telling me about illustration friday.com - here's my first foray

-maryn



illustrationfriday.com